[Charlie Southerland]

Keep going, Andrew. I'm getting a picture of who your team is. Far be it from me to stop you. It sure ain't America. You are the reason 60 million people voted for Trump. I hope you are this excited in four years. We might get 49 states like Reagan did. More, please.

I am still waiting for you to tell me what does Pound have to do with any of this and who or what Counter-Currents is. Cat got your tongue?

[William A. Baurle]

Just a thought.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Originally Posted by Charlie Southerland

I'm getting a picture of who your team is. . . . It sure ain't America.

What is it then? More than half of U.S. voters in the general election loathed Trump's campaign, his comments, his arrogance, his cruelty. Are all of us not America?

You still haven't been able to answer my question from post #37 on this thread, Charlie. That's where I list egregiously negative things about Trump and ask: Even if you and other Trump supporters are in agreement with some of Trump's policies do you feel that those positives outweigh the massive negatives and the great damage he can do to the U.S. and the world?

The reason you can't answer it is that it's unanswerable without saying: "We're willing to overlook the immensely and dangerously negative stuff, we're willing to turn a blind eye to it as long as it's not blatantly against us and so long as we can get our agenda met." It's like someone saying they don't mind dumping toxic coal waste in streams provided the coal industry gets its way. Oh wait, that just happened this month.

I am still waiting for you to tell me what does Pound have to do with any of this and who or what Counter-Currents is. Cat got your tongue?

Not sure about Counter-Currents but Andrew meant Pound's anti-Semitic radio broadcasts from Fascist Rome during WWII.

[William A. Baurle]

Pound lived to old age, and lived to regret his irrational anti-Semitic ranting and raving. I'll see if I can find my biography of Pound and locate his exact words on the subject, if it's not online somewhere.

[Andrew Frisardi]

I agree about Pound, Bill. He was a self-righteous blowhard at times, but this was counterbalanced later by conscience and humility. Several years ago I got to know an old English poet in Italy who had known Pound well in his later years in Venice (in the '60s). He told me that Pound had come to see how he'd been gravely mistaken in his support of Mussolini and anti-Semitism.

[Charlie Southerland]

I don't know, Andrew. I grew up in the 60's and 70's. I said the pledge of allegiance, sang the national anthem, God Bless America, and dove under my desk during Thermonuclear war drills. I love baseball and apple pie. Not grits though. I hold onto that America. I am a hunter, a grower, a Christian. America seems far removed from what it was. I played and fought with black kids and white kids alike. I've worked my whole life with the same.

Andrew M. can barely contain himself from outright calling me things, derogatory things that are barely covered by his hyperbole and rhetoric. I saw that kind of hate from the Commie Unions in the steel mill in East Chicago where I worked. I detested it then and I detest it now. So no, not all of us are America. So, if you hate this country, hate the people who work, go to church, pay their bills and taxes, vote for love of country instead of being a Commie sympathizer whose warped ideals are totally unrelatable out here in fly-over country, then it's pretty hard to find common ground with such.


I thought I had answered you early on but here goes.

Any Person in charge of anything can be catastrophically bad in their given or elected position. Trump is no different than anyone else. My job is to keep an eye on him personally, through my elected representatives and through my prayers to God. Not necessarily in that order. Why do you wish for more than that? Do you wish him ill to the point of destroying the country just to prove your point? I hope not.

Just what is it do you want, Andrew?


I only know Pound through his poems, his Cantos. I like his trimeters. I don't want to know his politics. He's dead.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Originally Posted by Charlie Southerland

Trump is no different than anyone else.

I couldn't disagree more, Charlie. That's exactly the point: this really is different, it's a different order of dangerous than we've had with various administrations. Bannon's a symbol of that (though far from being the only perpetrator), and the hateful rhetoric spewing from Trump's mouth or his Twitter feed is the daily reminder. As many conservatives have said, Trump is not really a conservative. He insults even the best among conservatives--McCain for instance. Why would you overlook that or let it slide? I urge you to set aside ordinary conservative expectations/politics to look at this squarely for what is developing before our very eyes: an attempted hijacking and betrayal of U.S. democratic (note the small 'd') values.

I only know Pound through his poems, his Cantos. I like his trimeters. I don't want to know his politics. He's dead.

I have mixed feelings about Pound. I like some of his poetry, find much of it dull or self-indulgent, but overall I think he made a significant contribution to poetic idiom. The politics unfortunately do run through some of the Cantos as well.

[Charlie Southerland]

Yes, Andrew, we like in extremely dangerous times. We face Islamo-fascism extremism, Globalists who would have us in chains, Communists, low information nabobs, infrastructure deterioration and several other threats to mankind. Those are all things we have faced since the 1972 Olympic Games where Palestinean terrorists killed the Israeli team.


America is the most well armed and well trained populace in the entire world. We are not France or Germany or Italy or the UK. We are as prone to revolution now as we have always been. It is what separates us from everyone else. If politicians get out of control, rebellion is in our blood.

Yes Andrew, we are dangerous, very very dangerous, all the time.


McCain hears voices. He would have been scary as president.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Rant and polemic won't fix the situation, Charlie, dangerous or otherwise. You know that I gave McCain as one example among many to illustrate that Trump doesn't represent conservative values or politics. Trump's own pick for Supreme Court nominee, who seems an excellent example of an honorable and conscientious conservative, expressed alarm about Trump's dismissal of leading U.S. judges. As I recall, Trump also dismissed his own intelligence community when it didn't agree with his agenda. That's a betrayal of what a president is hired to do. Your rant and polemic skirts around that as a way to avoid addressing the details. As Blake said, we're idiots when we generalize about important shit like this.

[Jim Moonan]

Charlie: "Trump is no different than anyone else."

If you can't see how he's different than anyone else than you've got a problem. It's fixable. Please examine the man himself, the entire panoply of his adult life, and re-imagine who he is and why he is the wrong person at the wrong time to lead our nation.
(Obama was the right person to lead our nation who, in hindsight, came at the wrong time. Such a tragedy.)

Charlie, you seem to me to be a fatalist. I think most religious paradigms (if not all) require that of individuals looking for answers. There are no answers. As long as you shield yourself with religion I don't think you will grow as a person through to the end. Religion can play an important referential part of life, but not, in my opinion, the guide for all my life.

Tell me, what do you think of Obama?